Thirty-Six Minutes
by i am a mango
Summary: "People don't really go to heaven when they die. They're taken to a special room and burned." Sherlock is seven and Father is missing; everyone says he's died, but Sherlock doesn't know what that means. Kid!lock


_"Is it because he's gone to Heaven?"_

_Sherlock weighs the value of perpetuated truth against detriment of John Disapproval. _

_He glances over to the man folded into the chair, frowning at the two little girls. Sympathetic, clearly, indicator of higher potential disapproval rates. Potential responses are a scandalized utterance of _"Sherlock!" _or a sharp glare, and at worst a half hour of the silent treatment. Sherlock's eyes pass quickly over John's face; date with Sarah last night, which both irritates Sherlock and decreases John's probable disapproval responses._

_Perpetuated truth it is, then._

_"People don't go to heaven when they die, they're taken to a special room and burned."_

_John Disapproval is a bit better than Sherlock deduced, only the former two responses with no silent treatment tacked on. But later, between two clients' visits, he asks The Question, and it's quick work again to determine the value of truth, but weighed this time against John Pity._

* * *

Father is missing, and Mycroft won't talk. He is what Mummy would call distressed, because sad is too common for her, and because elegant speech is her only way around a similar display of emotion to the one Mycroft is letting out.

Everyone shuts themselves away—Mycroft in the library and mother in her bedroom, and Sherlock is left to wander through the house and puzzle things out from the little bits he can catch from the people flitting between rooms.

They keep tossing a word around, but he can only catch it around corners and when they think he isn't listening. The cook says it, and Mycroft whispers it bitterly through the cell phone, but in front of him they switch the word around, hide it beyond layers of niceness. Their faces turn to smile as if he is a baby, and he wants to shout at them that he isn't, that he traded in his Batman sheets for silk ones and that he can already read chapter books. But none of them seem to count this to his credit, and they speak around the word instead.

His grandmother: _He's gone, dear._

One cook to another, a quick shift of tone when he caught Sherlock looking: _He passed in the night._

Mycroft, when Sherlock asks where Father's gone: _He's moved on._

They must all mean the same as the other word, the d-one they think he can't catch, but they are so very careful. And for two days, he cannot figure out the clue. He could have looked it up—Father kept dictionaries on the high shelves in the library, just barely within Sherlock's reach—but that felt too much like cheating.

This was a very clever game, and even if somehow Father _didn't_ catch the cheat, Sherlock knew that the victory of comprehension would be a fraction less sweet.

He wanders instead through the house's halls, looking quietly in each place his father might have hidden. His office is empty (but locked, to trick Sherlock; he'd felt a stab of joy when he discovered the unmoving knob, but disappointment when he jimmied the lock open and burst in to find it unoccupied) and there was no trace of him in the shed where he'd once hidden.

That was Sherlock's first mystery, the greatest present of his sixth birthday: clues that were there when he woke, that dragged him around the house, perfectly planned without the normal artificiality of planted clues, and just obvious enough that Sherlock could solve it before breakfast.

And Father had been there, reclining in the wheelbarrow with a book in his hands, squinting through the thin light streaming in the shed's back window. When Sherlock burst in, he smiled warmly and closed the book (no bookmark, he always remembers the page; Father is such a clever man).

"Thirty-six minutes," he said, standing up to reveal a miraculously clean, unrumpled suit. Though there was not the smallest hint of displeasure, Sherlock walked a little stiffly into his father's hug and wished it had been thirty-five.

But of course Father would never allow the mystery's answer to be the same twice, and standing there with the wooden door rough on his hands, Sherlock looks over the dusty rakes and shovels and feels stupid. He steps back, turning on the empty shed and swallows a lump in his throat as he walks back to the house.

In the foyer, he discovers a grove of potted flowers riddled with bits of paper and crinkling cellophane, and he frowns at those for a while, wondering where they've come from. He glances at the closest bit of paper and sees a name badly scrawled in cursive, but he's only just learned to read and can't quite make out the letters correctly, so he puts that aside and stomps off to the sitting room. Mummy is there, wrapped in a blanket with a book propped against her knees, and Sherlock covers himself in the edge of her blanket and allows her to pet his hair as he drowns in his own stupidity.

As luck (no, not luck, a plan! a brilliant, lovely plan that only Father would think of!) would have it, the next day is a Sunday, and Mummy drags them along to the chapel she likes to take them to when she is sad. No. Distressed.

Mycroft says, under his breath, that if he and Sherlock died, Mummy would become a saint. She looks gravely affronted and bursts into sobs in the church parking lot, but Sherlock turns around with interest. Died? Surely a permutation of the d-word.

He catalogues that as a clue.

They are herded into the church, and Sherlock is raptly attentive now, because a clue has reared its head in this strange game.

The service (he hears Mummy call it Mass) is mostly uninteresting, but Sherlock knows this is part of the game. His father knows how boredom halts his observation, and it's a test: find the golden egg amidst the dull ones, the thing of value amidst worthless words. How clever. How very, very clever.

There is a reward halfway through, and Sherlock nearly leaps from the pew at it. The man in funny robes says Mycroft's word again, _died,_ and while Sherlock is sitting there with his mouth hanging slightly open from the joy of finding the connection, he goes on:

_On the third day he rose again in fulfillment of the Scriptures_

and something comes after that too, but Sherlock understands now, he has the clue in his grasp and he owns it, the game is his. Wiggling in his shoes, Sherlock grins up at his Mummy.

Tears trickle down her face into his hair, and fall harder when she sees him smiling.

Oh. He feels suddenly stupid. He feels their father's words to Mycroft reverberate in his mind: _Don't be snide because you're clever_. He's never realized that the words might apply to him too, and he puts away anything that could look like arrogance and pats his Mummy's hand solemnly.

"I'm sorry", he tells her, and she tries through her tears to say that it isn't his fault, but he knows how sad it makes her when her sons are rude about their deductions, and resolves not to do it again.

His Mummy kneels to pray when the service is over, and Mycroft stays with her, staring up at the bloody man in metal at the front of the church. Sherlock tries to remember his name, and though it's probably central to whatever he just witnessed, it isn't a clue and is therefore irrelevant.

Clambering over his Mummy's legs, Sherlock darts out after the man in funny robes and find him outside, blinking in the bright sunlight as he shakes the hand of each person who exits.

Adults think Sherlock will be afraid of them, and this man is no exception. He bends, lowering his face to Sherlock's level, and offers him a handshake and grandfatherly smile meant to ease the fear that unfamiliar adults instill in children.

Both are swiftly rejected in favor of more clues. "You know what dead is," he accuses, in that firm voice Father uses over the phone, the one Mycroft tries to imitate when Sherlock is really annoying him.

"Yes," the man says, and Sherlock gets the feeling that he finds the question amusing.

"Well," he says, when no reply comes. "What is it?"

He seems to struggle for delicacy, and finally clears his throat and says, "Dead is the opposite of alive." He looks to see if Sherlock follows (he doesn't but pretends to, because he knows Father would never want him to ask for a clue twice). "Alive is when you're here on this earth, and dead is when you leave it."

"I see," Sherlock says, and honestly believes that he does. "And where do you go once you leave?"

His shoulders rose and fell, and his face lit with a benign smile. "Heaven, dear boy."

"But three days?" He asks, frowning with the effort of understanding. "You said on the third day, he rose again."

"Yes, Jesus." He says.

Sherlock figures this must be the man Mycroft was staring at. "He's the one at the front who's all covered in blood?"

Seeming affronted by such a reduction, the man frowns. "Yes. Jesus, the son of the Father."

This makes absolutely no sense, but at that moment, Mummy emerges with Mycroft in tow and the man straightens, looking with alarm from her face to Sherlock's as he slowly begins to understand who this boy is and why he's asked about the dead. Mummy misses the man's distress, but Mycroft doesn't; he frowns down at Sherlock, who feels a sudden sense of accomplishment. Mycroft is in on it, obviously, and so is Mummy! That's why they were taken to church, that's why she's been so careful what she said around him.

Sherlock tries to focus: Mycroft's annoyance means that Sherlock's gotten information he wasn't meant to—not only does he know this game has rules, he's beating them! Making sure Mummy doesn't see, he gives Mycroft a smug smile and sticks out his tongue.

Sherlock is winning.

In the car, he mulls over the hard-won information and tries to piece it into coherence.

The Son of the Father bit makes it a sure bet that he's right about the game, and it's clear why Mycroft wouldn't have wanted Sherlock to have that—it helps too much, and Mycroft does not enjoy clear hints.

The third day bit is obvious, and stressful. Today is the second, and there's only one more left before Sherlock has to figure it out. Father has always found time limits very clever. Tomorrow is when he'll want to be found.

But heaven? An utter mystery. It's a location, of course, but what kind? Not one Sherlock has ever heard of, but that's the point. He has to learn, Father never gives him something he already knows.

They arrive back home, and Sherlock follows his brother up to his bedroom, tugging at the hem of his jumper to command attention. "It's important, Mycroft!"

When he turns, there is anger clear on his face, and Sherlock wonders if maybe he doesn't want him to solve the puzzle.

"Where is heaven?"

Mycroft splutters out a laugh and stares with incredulity at his little brother.

"I'm serious! Just a little clue!"

"What?"

"I can't work it out."

He shakes his head and turns his back on Sherlock, striding down the hall with steps too wide to follow. And at the end, just before he turns into his bedroom, Sherlock hears him mutter, "It's certainly not here."

"And Father?" Sherlock calls, hoping that his brother will be generous.

For once, he is. Mycroft shakes his head with something resembling concern. "Not here either."

He wanders around the house, not looking but thinking. Mycroft is too dull to give tricky clues, and that means at least one piece of the puzzle is in place: the time spent wandering about the house was useless.

But no, that's not quite right either. Father meant Sherlock not to find the clues until _today_, which probably means there's something Sherlock could have found _before_ today.

Sudden embarrassing stupidity washes over him, and he stands there in the hallway, still strangled by the Sunday Clothes, and frowns at the wall.

What could he have found? What's missing, what's unusual?

"Obvious!" He groans, and stamps a foot. The realization should make him feel worse, but it's too _exciting_, too promising, and he turns off, running toward the front door with a grin splitting his face in two.

It was the flowers; three of the little cards bore the same name—St. Bart's, and this is a dead giveaway, because he'd been smart enough to pay attention to _all_ of Mass and remembers after a second's hesitation that "St." designates someone in Heaven.

A location, he thinks, because his memory calls up a record of Father claiming to be on his way there last week. Some kind of tests, Sherlock thinks he said, but he is just beginning to understand how carefully Father planned this all out, and the awe is enough to distract from the specifics.

He spends the rest of the day pacing the hallways and poring over the subway map in Father's desk drawer, until Mummy and Mycroft have gone to sleep and he's free.

As he steps out onto the front steps, a wind colder than he can remember ever feeling in June bites at the thin fabric of his shirt, and he closes his eyes, trying to visualize the route he planned an hour before while he spun in circles with the map on his knees. And then he looks up into the clouded sky and takes a deep breath.

And steps off the porch into the darkness.

He takes the Tube from the stop near his house and feeds money into a machine until it spits out a ticket that sends him rocketing along beneath London. Nobody looks twice at him, because by the time he managed to escape the house, it was past midnight, and a lone seven year-old is the least of strange things to be found on a subway's graveyard shift.

* * *

It is sometime around two when Mycroft wakes with a horrible start and cannot understand why.

He does not believe in sixth senses (the supernatural sort; he believes in the literal, and has been told a dozen times that humans have all sorts of senses beyond the classic five. He did not need the last eleven iterations of the fact; one had sufficed). But there is something deep within him screaming that things have gone even more badly wrong.

Sherlock.

He knows, without knowing how he knows, that it is about Sherlock.

Sliding his feet across to the side of the bed, Mycroft stands and walks to the door, feeling the weight of exhaustion beg him back toward the bed.

He tells it no, he goes to the door.

Down the hallway he can see Sherlock's door standing ajar, a tiny light peeking out.

With dawning horror, he walks toward it and pushes into the room with the flat of one palm. And even though he knew this was what he would find, Mycroft is horrified at his brother's empty bed.

* * *

Sherlock cries at the entrance to the morgue, and that distracts the lady at the desk. When she goes to get him a drink and phone his mother (wrong number, of course, because he's given her the wrong name), he slips through the swinging doors and finds himself in a wide room whose walls are lined with closed silver cabinets, little white slips of paper slid into a piece of clear plastic on each.

Easy, he decides, and indulges the whim to jump onto the edge of a gurney, giggling wildly as it lurches forward a few feet on shaky wheels. They bump into a wall, he and the gurney, and he jumps back down to the ground, frowning at the slight indentation he's made in one of the cabinets.

Serious. He clears his throat the way he's seen Mycroft do and crosses his arms. The nearest cabinet has an empty plastic slot, but the one next to it bears a piece of paper reading 'Davis, Matthew.'

He wraps small fingers around the handle and yanks the door open. A man's feet are there, cold and going slightly blue, and Sherlock grins. He's hiding there! ""Neat!" Sherlock whispers, and closes it back. Mr. Davis says nothing.

Father's cleverness is more and more impressive; he's certainly had a lot of people in on this game. More than usual, which must mean he thinks Sherlock is worthy of the challenge.

A burst of pride swells his small chest, and is followed up by guilt. Matthew Davis's cabinet was freezing, colder even than the refrigerator at home. Father's is probably the same, and Sherlock's taken so long to find him that he's probably blue too, and shivering.

He backs up to the middle of the room, squinting around at each bit of paper until he finds the one reading "Holmes, Friedrich."

Bounding forward, he pulls that one open (his arms barely reach and his leverage is terrible, but he manages it) and sees his father's feet. "I win!" he announces with glee, and there is no reply.

"Father?" he asks, standing on tiptoe to see all the way down the line of the man's body. Everything is enveloped in the cover of a sheet except for a few pieces of curling black hair that stick out at the opposite end.

His feet are blue. Sherlock feels an uncomfortable lurch in his stomach. He's been too slow ("thirty-six minutes" echoes in his head) and he's made Father go all cold. "I'm sorry," he whispers, and there is no response.

"Father?" he says again, groping at the handles of other cabinets to pull himself up. Precariously balanced, he leans in and catches himself on the door of his father's cabinet. Something hits his nose, something chemical and unfamiliar, and though he mentally shuffles through the list of smells he's learned from Father's lab, he cannot reach the correct answer.

One foot slips on the makeshift rungs, and he falls, throwing out a hand toward the concrete floor. A world-shattering crack screams up his arm, and he clamps the other hand over his mouth to muffle his scream.

Tears extricate themselves from the corners of his eyes without permission, and he stares up, watching his father's feet disappear as the door swings shut with the momentum from Sherlock's fall.

He knows his arm is broken, even if he can't quite understand what that means, and cradles it in his lap as he hunches forward over bony knees, trying to silence the wrenching sobs that shudder through his chest.

The arm hurts, but it's only an arm.

It's the game that hurts more.

It isn't fun anymore, the game doesn't make _sense_. He wants to be clever enough for Father, but there are simply no answers coming to mind, no connections between the clues or bright spots of realization. Confusion. This is confusion, and he forgets in his distress to catalogue the feeling so he can identify it the next time.

He leans back, spine cold against the row of metal handles, and stands; the pain makes him sway, but a noise outside the room jolts him into awareness, and Sherlock is running, he knows instinctively that he can't be found here, and so he bolts to hide behind a row of boxes stacked beneath a gurney, holding his breath as he peers between a thin crack.

A pair of men stomp in, tossing jokes between themselves, and go immediately for one of the labeled cabinets. Evidently the cabinets have some kind of rollers, and they pull them out all the way, depositing one of Father's partners-in-mystery onto a gurney. Sherlock squints and sees the flaps of a cardboard box fluttering out around him, and cannot understand.

They lift the sides of the box, folding it up around the man on all sides, talking in casual tones as they do it, and Sherlock watches with a dawning horror he can't understand. They lift the box, groaning with its weight, and push it into an opening in the only wall not housing rows of cabinets.

Hurrying through the standard procedures, they close the man (and box) into the wall, sliding the little door shut with only a square of frosted glass to let in light.

Sherlock feels the sudden and immediate sense that something is drastically wrong. His stomach clenches at the idea, but it's irrational, and he knows even at seven that irrationality is the friend of no one. _Logic_, he tells himself, but even logic fails when one man reaches for a panel of black buttons and presses one that turns the world beyond the frosted glass into screaming oranges and flaming reds.

Neither man is fazed by this, and both walk toward another cabinet.

He knows before they reach it, before they even really turn towards it.

The older one opens his father's cabinet, and rolls Father out onto a gurney that already has an unfolded box waiting. The sheet is pulled back, and through the crack Sherlock sees his father in perfect relief for the last time. His eyes are closed, apparently in sleep, but his body is for some reason bare.

_Clue?_ Asks Sherlock's mind, and he tells it to shut up and think.

White cardboard folds up around Frederick Holmes, hiding the ivory skin and wild hair from view. They lift him up too, sliding him into the other slot.

They close the door, and one reaches for another button.

Sherlock knows what they are about to do, knows but cannot move, cannot even budge an inch because he is _so sure_ that trying to stop them will only send Sherlock toppling into the fire too. Shivering in the room's fearful cold, he presses against the floor, another sharp pang shoving itself along his arm when he brushes it too hard against the gurney.

The button is pushed.

The screaming orange is alight behind his father's glass.

Brushing off their hands, the men grumble something quietly and wander out of the room, and this is when utter panic sets in.

It must be a trick. It's only a magic trick, it has to be, it _is—_

He lurches forward, out of his hiding place. Self-preservation is substituted for insanity, and he bursts across the room, ignoring the pain in his arm as he pumps his fists.

Reaching the metal boxes, he clamps both hands over the handle, pulling at it with vicious rage, groaning with the effort it requires, but nothing moves Heat pushes through against his skin, raging against him, but he ignores it and keeps on pulling; there is a movement, a fraction of an inch's loosening of the handle, and—

"Sherlock!"

He hasn't noticed the muffled shouting going on in the lobby, but he does notice when a pair of arms wrap themselves around his waist and pull him away from the incinerator, wheeling backwards and turning him away from the tiny window.

His feet hit the ground as the arms drop him, and Mycroft's hands are on his shoulders, his gray eyes staring straight down into Sherlock's soul, and it's so _obvious_ that he wants to yell but he doesn't, and before Sherlock has time to ask why, Mycroft has pulled his brother against his chest in a hug so tight neither of them can breathe.

"It's no use," he whispers, tightening his arms when it becomes apparent that Sherlock's only desire is to get at the incinerator. The silhouette of Father's feet still shows through the glass, until the lady from the front of the morgue bursts in after Mycroft and blocks it from view.

When Sherlock has stilled, Mycroft lets him loose and stands, swiveling on one foot with practiced precision, his back straightening to take on Father's posture. He says things Sherlock does not hear or even care to hear, and after what must have been a year's explanation, a pair of larger fingers fold around Sherlock's own and pull him out into the cold lobby where Sherlock is apprehended by a doctor who wants to see about his arm, and Mycroft sits in silence as they wrap Sherlock's arm in layer upon layer of plaster that does nothing for his wounded mind.

At some point, Mycroft asks the woman what time it is, and when she says "Four thirty-six," a tear rolls slowly from each of Sherlock's eyes.

"All done," she says a moment later, pressing the end of a roll of blue plaster to Sherlock's immobile wrist. And she says something to Mycroft, and he responds in a way that is very mature and adult and whatever it means, it makes the doctor smile and nod as if Mycroft is not, in fact, a terrified fourteen year-old.

"Mummy isn't to know," Mycroft says as he leads Sherlock outside, sunrise gleaming in the corner of the sky. There is already a cab waiting, and Sherlock doesn't question it, just gets in. And then Mycroft tacks onto that another short sentence, one that splinters in Sherlock's ears and breaks off, leaving a hundred sharp points in his skin because he knows it is a lie and he is still young enough that lies can break him.

* * *

_Sherlock pretends not to hear, which is believable only because he's been rather worse than usual about getting lost in thought lately. He sighs, pulling the bow over his violin and releasing a stream of notes._

_Giving a little exasperated sigh, John stands. _

"_Two sugars this time," Sherlock tells him._

"_Sorry, what?"_

"_You're making tea."_

_John shakes his head—irritation rather than dissent—and trudges off in the direction of the boiling kettle while Sherlock stares out the window. He sees the girls again and wonders how he and Mycroft had been so hard at that age. And he hears Mycroft's words again in his ear._

It's going to be alright.

_He snorts, and sees John's eyes flick toward him in the window's reflection, but the laugh was without humot._

_Alright._

_A lie if ever there was one._


End file.
